Throughout this application, various publications are referenced by author and date. Full citations for these publications may be found listed alphabetically at the end of the specification immediately preceding Sequence Listing and the claims. The disclosures of these publications in their entireties are hereby incorporated by reference into this application in order to more fully describe the state of the art as known to those skilled therein as of the date of the invention described and claimed herein.
An important means by which tumors grow and invade surrounding normal tissue is by a complex series of cell-cell and cell matrix interactions. We have focused on the interaction of tumor cells with matrix-associated components. The Receptor to AGE (RAGE) interacts with a range of physiologically and pathophysiologically-relevant ligands (1–5). In normal developing neurons of the central nervous system, the expression of RAGE is markedly enhanced and co-localizes with that of its ligand, amphoterin. Amphoterin, a matrix-associated polypeptide, is expressed in developing neurons and certain tumor cells, such as rat C6 glioma cells (6–12).